


The Young Captain

by Teenybuffalo



Category: Sword of Welleran - Lord Dunsany
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:50:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teenybuffalo/pseuds/Teenybuffalo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How a hero of the city of Merimna was taken alive, and the Hill-men would have hanged him; and how young Iraine rode with Akanax in a desperate venture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Young Captain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/gifts).



Word’s gone to the City itself,

And word is over the Plain,

That Soorenard’s in irons strong

And his good men lie slain.

 

Up there started the great Captain,

“Woe that he ever fled,

He left our walls without a sword,

So mourn him as the dead.”

 

Up there started the next Captain,

Their words could not agree,

And up there started the young Captain:

“We’ll go despite of thee.”

 

\--“The Famous Raid of Lion’s Head”, _Songs and Ballads of the Cyresian Border_ , Tei Tonlon (editor).

 

            Once, in the summer when the men of Tarphet besieged Merimna for fifty days, Soorenard with ten followers rode out to harry the camps on the plain.  He sought to bring an end to the siege, and he took six hostages, chiefs and petty kings among the plains-men.  When he pursued a seventh, he and his men rode far into the foothills of the Cyresian Mountains.  There they were benighted in the Dubious Pass, beside the landslide called the White Scar, and there the hill-men fell on them in the dark and freed the hostages.  Soorenard, being without his sword when they took him, killed five men with a horse’s bit, and two with his bare hands.  Then one came with a secret art and bound him, and they were all gone, no one knew whither.  Six of his men, wounded, bore back the four dead to Merimna.

            By the long sun of the next evening, men watched from the walls of Merimna as the survivors came halting across the plain.  Their shadows went before them, and they led horses on which lay dead men, face down.  Young Iraine, the captain, was first to see them and know the truth, watching upon the walls with his sharp eyes.  Akanax rode out alone to break the siege for the second time in two days, and brought the survivors in at a hidden gate.

            Rollory was Captain-General in Merimna then, and he was last to hear the news.  At that time, all his days were spent riding out with troopers to guard the riverbanks and let the trading rafters safely bring food and goods to Merimna.  He returned at dusk to Maiden Castle and found out the tidings that had set all the City to lament.

            The three Captains met in the Judgement Hall.  “We are struck at the heart,” said Rollory.  “Soorenard’s lost, and on a worthless errand.”  He was then fifty-five years old, and had fought alongside Welleran and Mommolek who were gone.  Rollory was lean and gray and the skin was drawn in around his pale eyes, but age had only dried and toughened him.  His face and his forearms showed white creased scars.

            “They will hang him,” said Akanax.  “His body to a tree, for all the barbarians to mock at him.  I would rather have lost my right arm.”  She was a woman of forty years, a head shorter than the two tall men, and she wore her armor, having come straight from the last rescue.  It was twenty years since she had had to pass as a man to fight alongside Welleran; still, she always wore male clothing with her red and gray hair hanging loose.  The troopers called her “the Manslayer”.  Her face was lined and sardonic, but youthfully freckled.  Out of all songs on the Captains, the best were about Akanax. 

            “It must not be,” said young Iraine.  “Soorenard to be a prize of war?  We should scorn to see the worst man of Merimna in the hands of the hill-men.”  He was then twenty-one years old, and had yellow hair and fair, ruddy skin.  When he was angry, as now, a spot of red burned on each of his cheekbones.  Welleran himself had caused Iraine to train in arms from the age of ten.  By the time Iraine was a man grown, Welleran was gone.  Now Iraine was the only one of the four living Captains who had never fought beside Welleran.

            Rollory cast himself down in his chair.  “He’s robbed us,” he said.  Tears of rage stood in his old eyes.  “Soorenard, with that great heart of his, has done us worse wrong than the hangman will do to him.  I told him not to go, not to desert us in our need.  Still he threw his life away.”

            “He could have broken them!” said Iraine.  “He thought to strike the plains-men at the heart.  This is my own fault; I should have gone with him.”

            “Great thoughts, great plans,” said Akanax in bitterness.  “But they cut both ways.  The City is struck at the heart now.  Women will go about the streets lamenting for Soorenard, and men will fear to follow us.”

            “They will follow us, will they, nill they,” said Rollory.

            “Of course, brother soldier.  But can you put heart into them?  Already the citizen troopers balk at marching out alongside our horsemen.”

            “The very peace of Welleran has made men weak these last ten years,” said Rollory.  “I do not speak of you, young Iraine.  The mass of men have grown soft through times of plenty.”

            “Why do we stand and talk of causes?” said Iraine.  “If Soorenard lives now and dies before we come to him, we will curse ourselves as weaker than all.  Rollory, send word for a muster.  Let us arm and go where he lies.”

            Rollory did not stir.  “And what then?” he said.  “Shall we leave our city to starve without us?”

            “Why, we’ll return in a day and a night,” said Iraine.  “We three can come to the hills by tomorrow dawn, with chosen riders, and lead a horse for Soorenard.  Even if they’re to hang him in the morning, we can be swifter.”

            “They will keep him alive longer than that,” put in Akanax.  “If it’s the Hill bandits, I know them well and they’ll make a festival of it.  If he is their prisoner, we’ve two days at least.  It will take that long for the rabble to gather and spout their own praises.  Then they will fight for the right to knot the cord that hangs a Captain of Merimna.”  Her voice was like a splash of acid.

            “Then let us be all the swifter.  I go to arm.  Rollory,” he had never felt at ease saying _brother captain_ , “give our order for the march.”

            Rollory was silent, and he stared out the window at the night.  The sounds of the siege carried clearly from the city walls: men of Merimna giving the battle shout, the crack and thump of great stones flung from the towers.  Faintly there carried the braying and tuneless voices of bellows pipes that the besieging army played at a distance.

            “I ask you for orders,” said Iraine, even as he guessed what Rollory would say.

            “Shall I tell you to turn back time?” said the Captain-General.  Under his gray mustache his teeth were bared.  “That is the only order that will save Soorenard now.”

            “We need no foot soldiers,” said Iraine in desperation.  “Only let us three go together, and take those of our horse-troopers who show courage.”

            “And throw away our own three lives as well as theirs and his.”

            “He was never—”

            “Let me speak.  You call on me for orders, young Iraine?  These are your orders.  Be true to Merimna as he was not!  Stay and guard the walls.  Bring the rafts up the Yann with food.  Lift this siege with me and Akanax.  And after that, you can mourn for Soorenard, who threw his life away on a fool’s errand.”

            Iraine looked from one Captain to the other with his face reddening.  Akanax was silent and her eyes would not meet his.  “You would let him die,” he said to the old Captain-General.  “Who speaks?  Are you the Rollory I followed as a youth, and would you betray him into the hands of his enemies now?”  His voice had risen to a shout.

            Rollory stared upon him as he would on an enemy he cut down.  “Enough,” he said.  “I speak—I, Rollory, you wrangling boy.  And I say Soorenard has betrayed us all.  I will not leave Merimna helpless for the sake of his one life when all the City is daily in peril, and neither will you.”

            “I at least will be a man of my faith!” cried Iraine.  “Am I a squire or a cadet that you say what I shall do?  I am a Captain in Merimna.”

            Akanax went between them.  “Then fight the enemies of Merimna,” she said in a cold voice, with a mailed hand on either man’s chest.  “Not one another.”

            There was silence then while Iraine struggled to find calm words.  “And are you a woman of marble, Captain Akanax?” he said at last.

            “I am one who will blackguard none,” she said.  “As for my heart, you do not know it.”

            Iraine and Rollory glared at one another above her shaggy head. 

            “Welleran would never counsel us to let a brother in arms go to his death,” said Iraine.

            “Welleran.  And did you know him, young Iraine?” said Rollory with heavy sarcasm.

            “He was my master at arms and my first teacher,” said Iraine.  “And well you know it.  As for you, you are not my teacher to scold me.”

            “There are those,” said Rollory, “who will tell you that Welleran had a mighty black steed, such as was never seen before, one that could gallop up an overhanging cliff face.  Welleran left us these five years ago, no more, but there are already mothers in this City who will tell their children that Welleran’s very skin was mailed against arrows and that he bore a charmed life.  Perhaps he could never be slain except by a bolt of pure silver winged with swans’ pinions and loosed by a virgin who had never looked on death before.”

            “Enough double-talk,” said Iraine.  “Say what you mean.”

            “I mean that any fool can use the name of Welleran to say what pleases him most.  Do not you presume to tell me what Welleran would do.”

“He would do right if he were here!”

“And so do I.  Wrong would be to throw one useless death after another.  I know one thing Welleran would say if he stood here now.  Would you be a soldier?”

“Brother, you go too far,” said Akanax.

Rollory turned his face from her.  “Well?”

“You know that I AM a soldier,” said Iraine.

“Then be accustomed to the death of friends!” 

“I will go,” said Iraine, and struggled against rage to speak.  “I will ride tonight.”

“You cannot take men from the city’s defenses.  I am still Captain-General.”

“And I am a Captain as well.  My troopers answer to me alone.  And some among them are not cowards.”

There was a terrible silence within the room.  Outside, the noise continued.

“Leave me,” said Rollory.  “Get from this hall.  Go to the siege, go and cheer the men, sally out and cut down the plains-men, youth, to prove you are a man.  But if you leave the city tonight, I will see you outlawed.  Get out.”

“You must outlaw us both,” said Akanax, “for I ride with him.”

Rollory turned on her.  “You’re maddened.  Listen to yourself--he has whirled you away with him.”

“My mind is clear in sorrow,” she said.  “Merimna will go on, and you will hold the walls still, if I die.  Rollory, the men of the City will follow you, come what may; you could prevail without us.  Soorenard never will, though.  He needs us more than do the City or you.”

Iraine rejoiced amid all the anger of that hour.  “Then you, at least, are—”

“No praise,” said Akanax, “no more blame.  I do this for myself, as well.  There should be songs about my death as there have been for my life.  No more words.  Come away now.”

She linked arms with Iraine and turned him gently about, leading him from the hall.  Rollory stormed away from them, calling to his squires to attend him. 

 

Iraine permitted the older Captain to lead him from the hall.  They left Maiden Castle and sent word to their own troopers to muster at the parade ground within the city wall.  Iraine had fifty men and Akanax one hundred.  In half an hour the horsemen formed in order for their two captains.  By this time, every soul in Merimna knew Soorenard’s fate.  The troopers had turned the black linings of their cloaks outward as a sign of mourning.

Akanax and Iraine rode through the ranks, attended by torchbearers.  The horse of Iraine was a huge roan gelding, impossible to startle.  But Akanax rode a dapple-gray mare she had raised by hand, in the days of peace.  This mare was named Wonder, and she could dance to music or sit on her haunches like a dog.  Now she walked at a gentle gait in front of the ranks while Akanax slipped out of the stirrups and stood upright on her saddle.  In gladder times, the men would have cheered her.  As it was, they waited with somber faces for her word.

“Men!” she said.  “There’s a word among you that Soorenard is dead.  It’s wrong, hear me!  He was taken alive!  A captain of Merimna will be hanged like a dog.”

A sickened groan came from the men.

“He’ll die on the mountain, if we do nothing.  Young Iraine is resolved that we can’t rest, and I say the same.  We’re going to ride to Soorenard.”

A petty officer urged his horse forward and saluted her.  “Lady of Swords,” he said, “are you declaring war tonight?”

“We do not declare war.  Rollory will have no part, and we press no man against his will.  This is a raid, for one purpose, to regain Soorenard.”

“There is rumor that the Captain-General wants to drive you both into exile,” said the officer.  “Forgive me, Captains, but that is said.”

“Then Rollory can answer to me when we ride here again,” shouted Iraine.  “He told us both to lie at home and mourn for Soorenard.  When the dawn comes he will look out at the mountains and see the White Scar by the pass where your comrades died, and he will do nothing.”

There was a silence, and Iraine was darkly pleased to hear a few gasps.  He had at least moved their hearts. 

Akanax knew it, by her voice.  “Men, I’ll not lie to you.  We may reach Soorenard to die alongside him.  But we are going nonetheless.  We won’t blame those who stay for the defenses, and I won’t blame Rollory.  He stays only to protect Merimna.  Still, I will tell you one thing more.  This is an age that makes heroes.  Ten years ago in the peace, men had everything but a chance to show their courage.  Ten years hence, if we do our part, it will be the same.  But now, you can make your name.  Live and conquer with us, and you’ll be the heroes who brought Soorenard from captivity.”

She slid down into the saddle and drew up her horse beside Iraine.  Together, they waited.

The greater part of the men left that ground and returned to the defenses of the city walls.  Those who remained were strong men, in the prime of life, but they were the childless or the widowed.  Fifty of the men of Akanax and twenty of Iraine’s men stayed.  Their comrades who rode away looked into their faces, to remember them, and then saluted the two Captains.  Akanax and Iraine took the salutes with an appearance of calm.  Iraine had inwardly raged to see so many of his own guard leave; twenty remained, and he would value them all the more. 

The riders awaited their orders.  Akanax ordered all of them to arm and provision for a week’s ride, and muster at midnight at the city gates.  They would ride by dark and cut their way out of the siege’s ring.

 

After the last of the soldiers left the parade ground, Iraine and Akanax rode through the city with their torchbearers.  They went to the house of Iraine, and people looked at the captains’ faces in wonder but did not dare to question them.  In a hidden seat in Iraine’s garden, they sat and talked quietly, each with an arm about the other’s shoulders.

“I never thought at sunrise that it would come to this by night,” said Iraine. 

 “And I meant to hold back from this venture,” said Akanax.  “Your words were strong tonight, for good or ill.”

“It may be for ill.  Half of me wishes I could clutch my words back out of the air and make everything well with Rollory.”

“Rollory may be wiser than both of us,” said Akanax. 

“I thought I could goad him into changing his mind.  I used to admire his nerve, to show a stony face to any danger.  But he’s all stone, these days, and he only stands and counts the cost.  He’ll sit and listen when they bring tidings of the death of Soorenard.  He must have been young once, and then he would never have thought of it.”

“He was a stone chip even then.  But he’s the least of our worries tonight.”  She leaned back in the seat with every appearance of calm.  “Do you realize,” she added, “we are both likely to be killed in the mountaintops, and leave Rollory the lonely Captain of Merimna?  I hope he finds our successors quickly.”

 “What else could we have done?  Welleran himself would ride this raid, if he were here.”

He caught himself searching her face for approval, as he had done when a young knight; as he had done with Soorenard and even Rollory, and first with Welleran himself.  It was still hard to remember that now he was a captain, and her equal. 

The lean face of Akanax was unmoved.  “I remember what Welleran said of himself.”

“Don’t tell me another fable,” said Iraine.  “Not after that last business.  I knew Welleran, when I was first a young cadet.  He’s not a storybook giant to me.”

“I won’t insult you with nursery tales.  When Welleran last took the field against the men of Tarphet, he was already fifty and Rollory and I were then the youngest captains of Merimna.  Perhaps he thought we were very slender reeds, to leave the city in our hands when he died… but he said that if he was taken prisoner, we were to mourn him as one dead, and fight on.”

“And then?” said Iraine, and answered his own question: “And then he was never taken in battle, alive or dead.”

“Welleran and Death understood one another.  Since then, I’ve thought that if he had been taken prisoner, I would never have honored that wish.  But if I were taken?”  She shook her head.  “Merimna is above all.  Poor Rollory is right in this, at least: Welleran would do as he does.”

 _Welleran would never have left you in Death’s hands_ , thought Iraine, but he did not say it.  He could not bring himself to give her the lie.  Instead, he said, “But still you must find our errand worthy, or you would stay at home.”

She nodded.  “If I were in Soorenard’s place--poor lad! he’s wearing cold bracelets by now!--I’d be hoping for aid every hour of the day and night.”

“ ‘Cold bracelets’,” said Iraine.  “That’s from a song, isn’t it.”

“So it is,” said Akanax, “the one about the captured king of ancient days.  ‘Cold bracelets on my arms, Cold buckles on my feet.’  Of all the cursed times to remember a frivolous song…”

“It must have been sent as an inspiration for you to plan our campaign.”

“That’s it!”  Akanax gave a mirthless laugh.  “We can disguise ourselves as minstrels--you, me and five hundred men--and sing ‘Love shall find out the way’ under Soorenard’s prison window.”

“Was he your lover?” said Iraine.

“What?”

“Forgive me.  I’ve spoken ill so often tonight that it’s a drunkenness.  I thought you and Soorenard were lovers once, and that it was he who first took you to war, disguised as a man.”

She shook her head, and Iraine was relieved to see that she was not offended.  “Loved him?  Yes, as long as I’ve known him.  But I have loved Rollory, and though you may mislike the word from a tough old woman, I love you, Iraine.  I loved Welleran since first I knew him, but I can love men whom I never think of taking to my bed.”  She laughed.  Their quarrel had made Iraine sick with rage, but Akanax seemed drunken with it, almost merry.  “Do you know that they name children for you already?”

“I had heard something of it,” said Iraine, “but they’ve changed it.”

“They mean you, have no doubt.  There are mothers in the City calling their sons Iranon, ‘little Iraine’.”

“If I live,” said Iraine, who could see the train of her thoughts, “then one day I will have a son to call Soorenard, and a daughter to call Akanax; but not yet.”

“As they say: no maid is like Merimna.”

“Not yet for me.  And if I die tomorrow, I’ll not leave a broken heart behind me.”

 “That’s well.”  Akanax sighed.  “I do envy you, Iraine; citizens never name their daughters for me.  Still, I am old enough now to see the reason.”  She sighed.  “They may hail me in the streets and call me their shield against the storm, but no woman wants her little girl called after ‘the Manslayer’.  For that matter, I have no love for the title myself.  At least they have stopped calling me ‘the Manhearted’.”

 

*

 

Then Akanax went into the city, where she knocked at the door of a house and roused one from sleep who loved her.  They kissed and bade each other farewell.  Akanax had only a few necklaces and jewels, and when she went to arm herself she left them all in that house. 

Iraine stayed in his garden to pass the hours until midnight.  He paced among the lilies, outside the fair white mansion.  He had first been granted the house when he became a captain of Merimna; Welleran had lived there himself in early youth, decades before.  Of course Iraine cherished the building on that account, over and above its grandeur.

He thought of his first sight of Welleran as a child.  The hero had been a tall white lion, and the crowd made a path for him in sheer respect.  Iraine’s parents put him forward to be seen and blessed.  Welleran had looked him in the face as though he were a grown man, instead of an awestruck boy just old enough to walk. 

It seemed to Iraine that he was still that boy.  His youth of training and war, his years as a young officer had been dedicated to Merimna; he had always said, “For my city,” but what had truly rewarded him was regard.  That glance from Welleran’s old blue eyes had said: _Thou wilt grow.  Be a man.  Be mighty for my sake_.  Now that Iraine was a stout man of his hands, the hero was gone where he would never know of it. 

The night air was cold and the dew was dampening his clothes.  If the mystics were right, Welleran could look back on his city from Paradise.  Iraine sometimes hoped as much; in hours of triumph, he would sometimes let himself think that Welleran stood behind him, well pleased.  But then he would think on the Merimna of fifty years earlier, and realize that the city was the one deed of Welleran’s life which still stood to remember him.  Merimna was almost always in siege against the barbarians.  Although her armies would never let her be overrun, they could never gain and keep so much as a mile of new ground; not since Welleran’s time. 

 _We are all of weaker stuff_ , thought Iraine.  He remembered his resolve: to be a great man, to walk alongside Welleran the Mighty, with the people falling back to murmur of their deeds.  Not for a moment would he wish to be valued above Welleran, but he had hoped to stand at his side.  The world had changed, though, and greatness passed away.  Iraine was a man now, despite Rollory’s still treating him as a headstrong child.  A man--and merely a man.  Welleran had been more than that.  Iraine saw himself struggling all his life to come, trying vainly to shore up the borders that Welleran had established in the first deed of his life.  Once, Merimna had been a young empire, with new outpost cities and sentries at the Cyresian passes.  Now Soorenard was lying bound and prisoner in those mountains. 

“If I can only do my utmost,” said Iraine aloud, to no one but the white lilies, “then that I’ll do.”  He dried his eyes and went indoors to arm himself.

 

*

 

It was the afternoon of their second day in the Cyresian Mountains.  Iraine and Akanax with their men had broken the siege and ridden the plains and the rolling grasslands of the foothills on the first night.  They had come at last to the treeless mountainsides, where the wind never abated.  Sometimes they filed singly on narrow trails, and sometimes they led their horses through rocky defiles.  This was the country of landslides, and above them were the white snows and black crags which revealed no secrets.  At any other time, men could stand on the walls of Merimna and see the tiny specks of hill-bandits moving about the mountain ridges, singly and in clusters.  Now, all the men of those hills seemed vanished away like a frost in the sun, since they had reached the mountains.  The smoke had ceased rising from the fires at the Dubious Pass.  The Scar was a rockface of barren white limestone soil, a mile across, crumbling where the last rainfall had carved it with rivulets.  They skirted it, keeping to the solid ground.

When they reached the place where Soorenard was taken, there were few signs to be seen.  The dead had been carried away by their comrades, and whatever gear they had abandoned was surely in the troves of the hill-men by now.  Nothing otherwise remained except for the blackened pit of their campfire, with meat bones in the cinders. 

They passed a miserable night in a fold of the mountainside near the Scar.  Iraine watched till midnight, and Akanax till dawn; they had no wish to be caught sleeping on that mountain.  The men slept in huddles, wrapped in their flat straw bedding-matsIraine himself was cold, though he permitted no man to see him shiver.  The wind cut through even his warm clothes, and when he finally slept, he shivered in his padded arming jacket. 

On the second morning, they agreed to part and scout.  Akanax took twenty men in one party, while an old sergeant led the remaining troopers.  Iraine made up his mind to ride alone over the northwestern shoulder of the mountain and see what befell him.  The Hill-men would know Akanax at once, but they had hardly seen him until now.  He might find men to question before they knew him as a hero of Merimna.

It was while riding alone that he met two deer, fleeing towards him across the grassy slope.  When they saw Iraine, they turned and ran down the slope till they reached the bare chalk of the White Scar.

“Stranger!  You spoil our hunt!” cried a high young voice.

Two riders were trotting towards him across the top of the Scar.  Both rode on fat little mountain ponies, which carried them well, though their legs nearly touched the ground.  One carried a short horn hunting bow with an arrow on the string.

“Your deer’s still within range,” said Iraine.

“It’s in the Scar,” said the hunter.  “We’d be carried away in a landslide if we tried to get down there.”  From above, the Scar was a giddy white precipice, but the deer were tiptoeing lightly about in its loose chalk.

The two mountain ponies and Iraine’s horse were sniffing and snorting at one another already.  The hunters seemed little more than boys.  They were plainly Hill-folk by their fur trousers and coats, but they were far too young to have any part in the entrapment of Soorenard.  They both had blue scarves wrapped around their heads in the wind, and their faces were hidden save for their sharp eyes.

“Then forgive my intrusion,” said Iraine.  “I’m a soldier but no hunter.”

“A soldier of the city?  What do you do here, riding all alone?” said the unarmed boy.  He seemed older and the leader of the two.  “Speak, declare!”

Iraine was ready for this.  “I am called Ellimos,” he said with perfect truth.  His older sister had given him the nickname as an infant.  (It meant “young one”; times had changed but little.)  “I am a soldier who has defied my officer, and… I ride to the Kings of Five Forts, unless I can find work in these hills for a strong man of his hands.”

“You’ll be shot,” said the unarmed boy.  “Those of the City are not welcome here.” 

“You shouldn’t admit you’re a mutineer,” said the younger boy.  “No one will take you on.  The Kings will say, ‘How can he be true to us if he’s been false before?’”

Iraine hung his head and looked abashed.  “I never meant mutiny,” he said plaintively, “but he would not heed me…”  It was all too easy for him to blush.  “I know that I still have an air of the City, but I’d hoped to change this armor for a suit of furs.”

The two hunters turned to each other and chuckled.  “People could still tell in a glance,” said the younger of the two.  Iraine realized he was hearing girls’ laughter.  First one rider and then the other pulled down her scarf.  Their faces were stained with the scarves’ indigo dye across noses and chins.  The elder woman was perhaps forty and the younger no more than eleven, and they had the same round-cheeked face with thirty years’ difference.  Mother and daughter, then. 

He was inspired to say, “Kind ladies, set me on the right path for the Dubious Pass, and I will hinder your hunt no longer.”  He made sure to look tired and disheartened as he turned his horse about.

“You’ll never get out of these hills by daylight,” said the mother.  She looked resigned.  “Come home and meet my husband; he’ll treat you to the best.”

At last he would be able to question one of these wanderers.  He would sit and drink with the husband and even eat the hill-folk’s loathsome food with him, if it came to that, and perhaps he would learn the way to Soorenard by careful talk.  Iraine thanked the women and followed their ponies along the slope.  The girl was curious about him.  She swiveled around on her pony and rode facing backward in order to stare at him, until a sharp word from her mother made her remember herself.

“Home” proved to be a hill-camp in the next ravine, with three round skin tents.  A dozen more ponies grazed on tethers in the dry grass; there was a full water-skin for them, propped on three sticks.  Iraine realized that he and Akanax had led their men a stone’s below this place on the previous day, and never known it was there.  There was no campfire to show its smoke.

A tall, fat man dressed in furs came out the front flap of the largest tent.  He saw Iraine riding into camp with the women, and roared out: “This is not a roe-deer!  Molinka, Pola!  What have you caught?  We can’t eat that!”

“It’s a runagate boy,” said the woman, Molinka, as they dismounted.  “I thought it best not to let him stay out and get his throat cut.”

“Only dumplings for supper, though,” said Pola.  “I saw two deer but I didn’t get them.”

“Fie, no!  Don’t trouble about it!  Better have host-craft and guest-craft with dumplings, than a roe deer with no company.”  He nodded to Iraine.  “Welcome to our patch of ground, young man.  I am Haranish.  You’re welcome to share what poor food and drink we have about us.”

“I will be most grateful,” said Iraine. 

In the Judgment Hall in Merimna, there was a fresco with pictures of Welleran’s first victory.  It showed the tribes of the plain and the mountains offering Welleran their swords.  This man looked exactly like the painted Chief of the Hill Barbarians, except that he was hugging his wife rather than kneeling in defeat.  Everything else was there: huge shaggy beard and hair full of braids and copper rings, round fur cap with a bone button on top, bearlike body wrapped in the fur of wolves and foxes, white teeth bared in a smug grin.  The painter had been unable to depict the reek of smoke which breathed off Haranish.  Iraine loathed him at once, but fought to hide it in a forced smile.  He must find out, at least, what these three knew.

He said the polite things, and allowed this image of Welleran’s ancient enemies to take his horse’s bridle and tether it beside the water skin.

The woman and the little girl conducted Iraine into the biggest tent.  He realized then why he had seen no smoke to give away the camp.  All the smoke was here, inside the cooking tent, turning the air gray and stifling.  It seemed they were ready to eat a meal, and they would do so lying on furs around the cookpot which bubbled on a little fire.  He sat awkwardly on a skin near the door.  Molinka and Pola tried to help him strip away his armor, but he insisted on keeping it all on, and only let them take his riding cloak.  As he spoke, he inhaled the smoke and started to cough.

“Our City man is not used to wayfaring,” said Haranish, darkening the tent door as he slipped in.

Iraine managed to laugh.  “No; I am soft in my ways, I admit it.  I’ll grow used to it, though; after all, I am a… runagate, now.”  He must still seem to be a traitor to Merimna.  “I’m bound to look for a rich master, the richest I can find, but I know I can’t expect to lie soft at night any more.”

 “I heard that in the Anthill they have butter whenever they want it,” put in Pola.

“Where is that, maiden?” said Iraine, and at the same time Molinka snapped, “Be quiet before guests.”

“Where you come from.  Don’t you?”  She pointed through the tent wall in the direction of the plains.  “The city with walls that go straight up.”  She looked defiance at her mother.

“Anthill.”  It was exactly the petty childishness he had expected from barbarians. 

“Pola, you must not pester Ellimos with questions,” said Molinka.

“It is no trouble,” said Iraine, seeing his opportunity.  “Yes, maiden, you are right.  In that City, folk live in plenty.”  He found it easier to spit “City” in disgust than to say “Merimna” in the same contempt.  “More than butter; there are winter oranges and lemons there, brought across the Ocean Sea and rafted up on the Yann.  You may have anything you wish to eat in the City.”

Pola sighed with longing as she took the pot off the fire.

“Provided,” went on Iraine, warming to his theme, “that he is a man of no ambition and little will.  Freedom is no longer to be had, in the City.  It’s a cramped space, to my feet.”

“Since that new warlord took the fort?” said Haranish.  “That bandit Rory, or whatever he’s called.”  He stretched himself on the largest fur rug, reclining on one elbow in plump comfort. 

Iraine tried lying in the same posture.  He found that it brought his head below the level of the smoke, which hung over them like a tame stormcloud.  Now that he could breathe easily, his mind went racing ahead.  The Hill-man was even more ready to talk than Iraine had dared hope.  “Rollory,” he said, staring grimly into the fire.  “Rollory is his name, kind host.  Half our strength has passed by since Rollory’s been sitting in the Maiden Castle.”  He was pleasantly warm for the first time that day. 

“Rollory cares for one thing, and that is for his own good name,” said Iraine.  “He will sit in Merimna and save his men from battle, so that they will live to praise him next year.  One day, men like you will overrun the city’s walls,” Iraine had seen it in nightmares, “and carry off Rollory, to hang last of all your prisoners.  That will be no one’s fault but his own.  Those who dare not keep their own lands deserve to lose their lives.  As for me, I’m bound north—to the Five Kings, if I live so long.  I’ll show them how well I can bear a sword.”  Even that was true, in a fashion.  There must be strife one day with the Five, and he hoped to lead his men to war.

He raised his eyes to see how his host took this.  Haranish was gazing thoughtfully at him, but remained silent.  Between the two men, Molinka had stretched out like a cat, her eyes never leaving Iraine for very long.

“Do you still wonder at my discontent, kind host?” Iraine asked.

“Not I!  Ha, ha—I’d not dare to!  A man so proud, there must be no room for him in the Hollow Land!”  Iraine had heard that name for the river plain before from wandering merchants.  “But don’t be so formal, will ye?  Call me Haranish, or ‘friend Haranish’ if you please.”

“The dumplings are ready,” said Pola, coming in with a steaming cauldron.

“Better and better!” said her father.  He winked at Iraine.  “After supper, young man—eh, you don’t like that, do you?  Well, Ellimos—we’ll talk more of this.  If you truly will hire out your sword, I may know some employment for you.”

With that, Molinka passed around small tin bowls, and Haranish began to praise his wife for her cooking.  The dinner looked as vile as Iraine had imagined.  Molinka had cooked white, glutinous dumplings, and she piled them into the bowls with her bare fingers, and poured over them some thick green sauce that had cooked in the same pot.  His hosts fell to, eating with their fingers.  Iraine forced himself to take a bite, holding the bowl near his chin to keep from spilling sauce on the furs.  There were odd spices in the sauce, and the dumplings were wrapped around mushrooms and something like smoked venison.  He was surprised to find that they were wholesome, even good.  He would have thought it a fair meal if he had not been forced to eat it lying on one side. 

Everyone drank from a bowl full of weak ale, which Haranish passed around the fire.  Iraine praised the cooking, and Molinka avoided his eyes; perhaps she was very modest, but he guessed that she hated him for a City man.

No one tried to draw him out in conversation.  The family talked constantly of small matters: the food, their next hunt, a tinsmith they all knew, their own ponies.  He kept his peace for the moment, though he burned to question Haranish. 

“A fine dinner, a fine time!” said Haranish at last.  They all cleaned their hands with a wet rag that he passed around.  “I will have to take my belt out a notch.  Now, we men will go for a walk about the camp, to talk of the ways of the world.  I trust you two will be about your women’s work.”

“We have it ready to hand,” replied Molinka.

Outside, the cold wind hit Iraine’s face hard after the warmth of the tent.  It was almost sunset; they were already in the dark, as the sun was setting behind the mountain crest.

Down on the plain, the sun still shone on the walls of Merimna.  The inner walls were of delicate rose-pink and white marble, and the outer of yellow sandstone.  The sun filled them with light and the city looked like an invulnerable maid who ruled her land with kindness.  It was impossible to doubt Merimna’s strength in this beautiful light.

Perhaps Soorenard was in these hills, captive within sight of the city, and even now wondering whether help would come. 

“It’s an antheap,” said Haranish at his side.  The hill-man cast an unloving glance at the city on the plain.  “Issuing with stingers and trouble.”

“I cannot disagree,” said Iraine, though it came hard.  “But tell me of more hopeful things.  You said you might lead me to employment, and I mean to hold you to that.”

“Yes, and I shall keep my word.  I’m something of a trader, and tomorrow I’m to make a manner of merchant journey.  I’ll have to hire men, at any rate.”

“I would be happy to go, but you will find this a poor time to travel.  Have you not heard that a hero of Merimna is taken?”

“Hero?” said Haranish.

“The captain, Soorenard.  They took him while sleeping.”

“Oh, him,” said the hill-man.  “I heard something of that.  But what of you, runagates man?”

“That matters little.  If they’re hanging him already, it’s in spite of anything I could do.”

“No.  Would I be a fool to trust you?”

“You can see that I have left my old master, to change with the wind,” said Iraine, smiling in bitterness.  “This is not Welleran’s day.  Then, there were men loyal to captains, and captains loyal to Merimna.”

“Welleran!” said Haranish like a curse.  My grandfather saw his face in battle.  Don’t ye hold him up as a by-word for good faith.”

Iraine looked out at the darkening valley to hide his face.  “Why should I not?”

“I’ll tell you a story of Welleran,” and Iraine had a giddy feeling that the last two days had been only a nightmare and he was still confronting Rollory. “Have you ever heard of the  clan of--” and he used a name Iraine could never afterwards pronounce. 

“I have never heard of that clan,” said Iraine. 

“No; you would not.  The cousins Stojah and Stojane are the only ones left, and their names will yield to others.”

Their talk had plunged down into a dark ravine.  Iraine wanted to know no more, but he had to go on.  “They were warriors,” he said, to keep Haranish talking.

“Fifty years ago, they were warriors.  They were among those he used, Welleran did, paid in gold to fight their neighbors and open these passes for him.”

“The mercenaries,” put in Iraine, grasping at a notion he could recognize.  “And they--” turned on Welleran, he did not say.

 “He did get his money again.  When these hills were won, then he roused the City men in the night, and they fell on that whole clan sleeping and butchered them.  Those who escaped were women and children in arms.”

Iraine gritted his teeth against denials.

“They say,” went on the other, “he was afraid they would rise against him, and so he struck first.”

“That’s a lie!” Iraine shouted.  “Let it rot in your mouth!”  He whirled to face Haranish.  The hill-man was expressionless.  “Welleran was too great for those deeds!  He never would have struck men in their sleep, and he _ten times never_ would have struck for fear or money.”

“Perhaps,” said Haranish with a sneer, “he woke them up first.”

“This is what happened.  You Hill-folk turned upon him in the night and he had made his men lie awake all armed, expecting that end.”

“ ‘We Hill-folk’.  I was not born in those days.”

“No!  You’ve heard grannies’ tales.  I knew Welleran himself!  Listen, now, to me.  There is no other truth.  Even if I was too young to be his comrade, Welleran taught me to be a man and to love the truth.  He taught me to have honor.”

“Honor,” said Haranish.  “I’ve never seen it in nature.”

“It is honor prevents me from knocking you on the ground.  I’ll not strike my own host, though!  You may blackguard even Welleran.  But you only show your malice.”

With all this, Hararanish still smiled.  “I’m glad I’ve caught you far from your sword, young Iraine.”

“Do you think I would draw upon an unarmed… What did you say?”  He had been in such a passion that it almost escaped him.

“Iraine, I say.  Do you deny it, ‘Ellimos’?”

He had congratulated himself too soon.  “No,” he said, as his plans shattered about him.  “When… when did I betray myself?”

“With those last words.  But I had wondered from the first.  When my girls bring home a great big lad with yellow curls, and he spins me a rope of lies about running off to be a mercenary, then I start to think.  Specially when he knows well there’s war afoot.”

“I told you no lie,” said Iraine wearily.  “Every word was strictest truth.  I’d scorn to strike my host and I’d scorn to tell a lie.”

“Yes, and we’ve heard of your temper, too.”

Amid all the chagrin of his failure, Iraine felt himself oddly flattered.  They looked at each other as though this were the pause and salute before they met in combat.  “I’d thought no one knew of me up here,” he said.

“There are tales of all you warlords,” said Haranish in the same strange moment of truce.  “I’ve heard it said that when young Iraine rages he snorts sparks from his nose.  But, mark me: I told you the truth as well.  I am bound on an errand—to buy and sell a slave.”

“Soorenard.”

“Well guessed.  Yes, well done.”  Haranish smiled the same smug grin as when he had lain at ease by the fire.  “I mislike--”

“Where is he?  Where’s the man who dares to make Soorenard a slave?”

“Let a man finish.  There are those who will do more than that.  Some would hang him, to shame you of the Anthill.  Now, I feel that he’s no worth to any man, dead.  I say that they should sell him north, to the Five Kings, and then we’ll have both his price and Merimna’s shame.  They may make me their go-between.”

In Iraine’s heart fury warred with joy that Soorenard was still alive to be rescued.  “No man in Merimna will ever be ashamed for Soorenard.  ‘Shame unto him who shame shall cry.’  At any rate, you took him in his sleep when he was ill-guarded.”

“I?  I did not lift a finger.  I’m only Haranish the trader.  Young Iraine, warriors did it who never asked my advice.”

“You’re hand-in-glove with them, if you think he is yours to sell,” said Iraine.  “And you will not go from here before you tell me where he is.”

Haranish sighed.

A suspicion struck Iraine, and he turned and headed for the further tents.  It would be a foul deception if Soorenard had laid captive in this camp while Iraine lay and ate his supper.

“That’s my sleeping tent,” called the hill-man.  “Save your time, I’m not keeping him in a saddlebag either.  He’s not here.”

Iraine turned again on his host.  “Say what you will, I’ll have him from you.  Where do they keep him?”

“That’s a question for a criminal,” said Haranish.  “I’ll question you.  Answer me… _civilly_ , isn’t that the word?  I’ve never seen those of the city be civil yet, funny thing.  Why are you here all by yourself?”

“I do not ride alone,” said Iraine, and instantly regretted it.  The hill-man was winning more secrets than Iraine could gain from him.

“No, that Manslayer woman brought you up here.”  Haranish’s smile was absent for once.  “We saw you yesterday; those monsters you call horses kick up a cloud of dust halfway to the sky.  But today, you’ve slipped her apron strings.  Eh?”

The name of Akanax could shake the courage of men who did not even know Iraine.  Haranish was frightened of her, at least.  Iraine would use that if he could, “apron strings” or no.  “I’ve told her to lie in wait.  She will ride down on you with all our men, if I raise the battle cry.”

Haranish looked about in elaborate unconcern.  “I see nothing.”

“Yes.  Men see nothing of Akanax before she strikes.”  That was true, though he guessed that Akanax was miles away at the moment.  “Don’t let it come to that.  For the last time of asking: where is Soorenard?”

“Show yourselves, girls!” Haranish called aloud.

Molinka and Pola shouldered out of the two sleeping tents.  Each of them held a short horn bow with an arrow on the string, and they drew and aimed the broad killing heads at Iraine’s face.

“Do we have to shoot him, Papa?” said Pola.  She looked sad.

“Not unless we can’t help it, my jewel,” said her father.  “Keep your eyes on my hand, now, as I taught you.”  For the first time, Iraine noticed that Haranish kept his left hand close to his side with the fingers flat.

Iraine stood and cursed himself for a fool.  He began to say, “You brought it to this pass!” but he stopped.  He had made the first threat.  Blustering was no part of a warrior’s work.  Welleran would never have done so.

Molinka looked steady with her bow.  He had no doubt from the hatred in her eyes that she would shoot him if he gave provocation.  Pola might aim high, but she was too young to know hatred and malice.  Iraine saw that her mother longed to see his blood on the dry grass.  In his zeal to set Soorenard free, he had created a fouler fate for himself: shot by a woman as he threatened her husband.  At least he would never live to hear Rollory say, “I expected as much.”

In the Paradise to come, though, he would have to answer to Welleran.

He would salvage his honor if he could.  Though he felt himself blushing, he bowed, first to Pola, then slowly to Molinka, not to alarm her.  “Kind ladies.  I do beg your pardon.  I should know better by now.  Haranish, let us not break our bond of… host-craft and guest-craft.  I’ll not call on Akanax.”

“Listen to him crawl,” said Molinka.  “Dread and fear are on him.  Big words and soft guts have the men of the Anthill.  Husband, you should make him kneel down and beg you for his life.”

 “Oh, no, sweet woman,” said Haranish.  “We’re better than that.”

“For my part,” said Iraine, “I’d thought you people of the hills were all bandits, but you do have some sense of honor, even if it may be twisted.”

Haranish thrust out his chest, feigning to be flattered. 

“You yourself hated to see a captive killed.  I never thought to find half that much nobility of mind among men who lived in skin huts.  And slavery can be undone, though it’s foul.  There is honor about you, even if you hate the word.”  They were still listening to him, and so Iraine went on: “My honor and yours have one root: if we kill, we must strike by day and openly.  Otherwise, you or your lady and daughter could have shot me already.  Will you not help me?  Your own conscience told you to help Soorenard, before ever I came.  One way or the other, I will redeem him to Merimna, and it is worth great price to me.  You know where he lies; you’ve all but said that you hate the business.  Let this end in parley, not in hillmen’s blood and not in the blood of our soldiers.”

“Oh, there will still be war, whether I help you to your friend or not.  Yes, I hate the matter.  Stabbing raids by night are low and mean.  I don’t say so from respect for your Soorenard, for I have none; but you do puzzle me.”  He paused.

“Why?” said Iraine, as his host-now-captor failed to go on.

“You never answered my question, young one.  Why do you do this?”

“This rescue?  Why would I not?”

“Molinka here thinks you’re a worm, but I say you’re brave and a lackwit.  You and your ‘honor’; there are plenty up here who wouldn’t call it murder to shoot you in the back.  So you risk your life for a scoundrel of a warlord.  Here the Anthill has turned out a lad with some sense of right and wrong.  And you’ll throw your life away for the sake of one who would let you hang, if you were in his place!  How have they put this into your head?  Don’t you see they’d never risk their lives for you?”

“You know nothing of the Captains.”

“All of you come from the same ant-heap as Welleran.”  Haranish spat on the ground.

Iraine almost struck him then, despite everything.  He brought himself under control and closed his eyes.

“Do you deny, young Iraine, that Welleran was a stabber by night who saved his own gold?”

“No.”  He spoke slowly.  “I will not deny it, because I see that no word of mine could make you change your mind.  Enough argument.  Were Welleran among us now, he would ride this rescue for me.  You may blackguard him, but it will still be true.  And even if Welleran were a poet’s tale who never lived, I would still come to the rescue of Soorenard.  That is all I can do.”  He took a deep breath.  “As for you, Haranish, you may call me Iraine and not ‘young Iraine’.  I may not be Welleran, but I am a man of twenty-one.”

A soft pat made him open his eyes.  Molinka had set down her bow.  Haranish and she held some unspoken exchange by glances.

Pola had taken her arrow from the string, and she was chewing nervously on the feathers.  Iraine followed her gaze out across the hillside.  A column of dust was rising from the mountain below them, heading upward.  Akanax and the troopers were searching for him.  She would find him full of a good meal and as useless to their search as before, having wasted the afternoon in risking his life.

Haranish came up and clapped him on the shoulder as though they had known each other for years.  “Get your horse, man of Merimna,” he said.  “I must have you gone, but I’ll see you from camp.”  He turned his left hand palm outward.

“Oh, good!” said Pola.  She dropped her arrow, hooked her bow over one shoulder, and ran before Iraine to loose his horse, eager to have him gone.  Iraine sighed, and mounted to the saddle.  He thanked the hill-girl, as he loomed over her like a centaur from horseback.  His roan shuffled and grunted in displeasure at being torn from his comfortable pasture.  At least he had profited by his time in the hill-camp, unlike his master.

Haranish himself was already mounted on a pony, and led Iraine from the camp like an honored guest.

“Truth for truth,” he said.  “Listen, because I will only say this once.  The man you seek lies at Cerastor’s Keep, bound in irons.  Ride for that bluff southwest.”  He pointed.  “That’s the one, like a lion’s head and paw.  There you’ll come to their front door.  What you do then is yours to do.  Fetch him home, if you live so long.  He came there by a falsehood in the first place.”

Iraine no longer trusted himself to know when he was being fooled, but he would go by these words till he saw the truth.  “Then I owe you a debt of gratitude,” he said.

“Pay it by leaving now, and head that Manslayer off before she gets here,” said Haranish.  “I may have mercy on you, but I think my girls would shoot her in the face.”

“Still, I will do you good when I can.  If Soorenard is there as you say, then I make a vow: I’ll fetch him home without killing a man.”

With that, Iraine rode off at a trot.  Behind him, Haranish made some half-laughing remark, but Iraine did not look back.

He rode towards the rising dust of the horsemen, his horse’s legs bracing against the giddy slope of the hillside.  In half a mile he met Akanax and the riders in the twilight.  She broke into a smile and waved to him in greeting.

“Turn west, up the ridge!” he called.  “I’ve just come from a man’s campground.”

“Is that all you’ve found?” said Akanax.  “I thought that you must be locked in single combat with a seven-foot hill-man, or that I would have to fetch you from bond as well.”  She looked pale, despite her smile, and he realized she had started to fear for his life.

“They asked me to have supper with them,” he said lightly.

“All this time, you’ve been filling your belly?  You and your luck always land on your feet; I suppose they drew you a map to the fort where Soorenard lies.”

“He’s in Cerastor’s keep.”

“What!”

He did not often see Akanax lost for words.  “We’ll have to ride on, and lead our horses in the rocks, but I believe we can come there by midnight.”  He frowned up at the bluff on the mountain ridge.  It did look like the massive head of a lion, against the lurid red of the sunset sky.  “And I have made a vow on my honor which I may not be able to keep.”

“All things are possible in this world,” said Akanax, recovered from her astonishment.  “Lay it before me and we shall make our plan.”

 

*

 

 _By the setting of the moon, Akanax and young Iraine reached the hill-fort with their men.  Iraine rode alone to the gates, armed and mailed.  He called for no surrender, but only for Soorenard, alive and unharmed.  Even as the Hill-men laughed in his face, they saw men climbing the trail behind him with torches burning.  The stream of lights poured up two by two, and it did not cease.  All the while, Iraine spoke of the gentleness and mercy he would show if his brother-captain Soorenard were freed before the dawn.  He spoke no threatening words.  All his threat lay in the men still marching up the pass and milling before the fort._

 _When dawn was only beginning to tarnish the East, the cooler heads among the Hill-men prevailed.  Soorenard was thrust out of the gates, and his sword and hunting-spear flung after him.  He wore a blanket wrapped about his body in place of a cloak, and he limped with the red marks of ropes in his legs; but when he saw Iraine, he put both arms about him and blessed him.  Then Iraine set him on a horse, and they departed with all their followers, speedily and with little noise._

 _No one of the Hill-men saw their artifice, nor would it be found out within fifty years: how Akanax had scouted the ground alone, finding the broad fortress path where the men could march up, and the tiny foot trail where they could run down again in darkness.  Five hundred torches of burning bedding-straw had come up the path in the night, in the hands of men circling over and over; Akanax had made seventy men a multitude._

 _Men said in Merimna afterward that this rescue was Iraine’s first triumph.  It was not the last great work of Akanax, but four years from that time she and Rollory and Soorenard all vanished clean from men’s knowledge.  They were seen during the triumph of the City against the forces of Thuba Mleen, as is recorded, but afterward their fate is hidden, as was the end of Welleran._

 _Iraine was left to guard Merimna.  He caused the statues of his three companions and teachers to join Welleran and Mommolek in eternal watch upon the city walls.  In the day of Iraine, his armies held Merimna’s border in the plain of Tarphet, and guarded safely a pass through the Cyresian Mountains, the pass that had once been called Dubious.  The day of Iraine made no heroes, yet it was remembered afterward as a brief and blissful time of peace._

 

THE END


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